Blog
I’ve been writing this blog since 2009, but there still seem to be plenty of interesting topics to mull over. You can subscribe (it’s free) to follow the blog by email – each new post will pop into your inbox.
Presto Music Award arrives
I have got so used to everything being online-only that I was very surprised when an Actual Thing turned up in the post to commemorate the Presto Music Award 2021 for my book The Piano. It's a nice little sculpture of the blue Presto Music 'arrows' logo. I knew about...
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Good wishes for Hogmanay
At the end of December, I usually reflect on my favourite concerts of the year. This year however, as you will know all too well, we spent the entire year in a pandemic. Concert life is still badly impacted, and freelance musicians have been more impacted than most....
Presto Music Awards 2021
Today I learned that my book The Piano - a History in 100 Pieces has been named as a Book of the Year 2021 in the Presto Music Awards. I feel very fortunate that it has now been chosen as a Book of the Year in The Spectator, the Financial Times and the Presto Music...
A mosaic of tiny pages
I've been putting together a special performing score of my Haydn piano concerto for the Florestan Festival. I'm going to be directing the performance ‘from the keyboard', and I don't want to have too many pages to turn. There's so much else going on in the festival -...
Ducklings
We were walking through Richmond Park, discussing various members of the younger generation and their current dilemmas. Should they change their jobs, travel the world, leave this partner or get together with that one? Will the pursuit of their dreams enable them to...
Calorie Gallery
Eat your heart out, pointlessly thin people, for this is a photo of the birthday cake Bob made for me yesterday. Two layers of chewy hazelnut meringue filled with double cream and fresh raspberries. A thing of beauty and a joy forever!
Legions of fans
I spent a long tube journey today reading the newspaper articles and special supplements about tonight's Champions' League Final football match between Manchester United and Barcelona. I'm not much of a sports fan, but anything can become interesting once you take the...
Plodding without thought of the summit
Today was a Bank Holiday, but I hardly noticed. To me it was just a valuable practice day in the week leading up to the rehearsal period for the trio's festival. Next Monday marks the beginning of a ten-day period in which we have to prepare all the pieces we're...
Slug Barrier
Bob's new vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden is being sabotaged by slugs. They emerge at night to munch on his tender lettuces and fledgling bean plants. We know the slugs dislike crawling over certain things, so for a while we collected our coffee grounds...
The upside-down piano
I find that Piotr Anderszewski's views on chamber music have begun to prey on my mind. Yesterday I said it was no hardship that chamber music has to be performed in an upright position. Since then I have started to wonder if I was too hasty. Now I suddenly feel that...
The verticality of chamber music
I'm still mulling over a remark made by the marvellous pianist Piotr Anderszewski in a Telegraph interview I read on the plane to Berlin. Asked why he doesn't play much chamber music, Anderszewski replied, 'Well...I'm a solitary person. But also I like to lie down,...
Sunny above the clouds
This morning we flew back from Berlin. Yesterday's thunderstorm had been swept away and the sky was a brilliant blue, with hundreds of fluffy white clouds bobbing about beneath us. Sometimes when travelling by plane, especially on a dull day, the glorious sunshine...
Beyond the Wall
Off early this morning to Heathrow for a concert this evening with the trio in Berlin's Konzerthaus. We used never to travel somewhere far away on the day of a concert, in case of delays. We'd had one or two nasty experiences which made us conclude that we must always...
Handel’s opera stars
Last night we attended the dress rehearsal of Handel's opera ‘Giulio Cesare' at Glyndebourne, thanks to a friend in the orchestra who kindly gave us tickets. Dress rehearsals at Glyndebourne, which are free but reserved for friends, family and supporters' groups of...
A painful index finger
The index finger of my left hand has been painful for some days. I think I whacked the piano keyboard too hard during a phrase marked ‘brutal' in a performance of Messiaen last week. Next morning, I picked up a mug of tea and it really hurt to curl my finger around...